22011948 Speech made by Mr. El-Khouri (Syria) in the Security Council Meeting held on 22 January 1948 on change in Agenda
22011948 Speech made by Mr. El-Khouri (Syria) in the Security Council Meeting held on 22 January 1948 on change in Agenda
The judicial practice is well known, I think, to all the members of the Council, that when a principal claim is submitted to any court of justice, the other party is free at any time to submit a counter-claim which is relative to the principal claim.The first duty of the tribunal hearing such a case is to determine whether the principal claim and counterclaim are related to each other to such an extent that they can be unified into one case. In that event the claims can be dealt with as one case, and they can be solved by one resolution. One judgment can cover both claims, or, if the claims are not related to each other, they can be dealt with separately.
I think that the formulation of the agenda, as prepared by the Secretariat and the President of the Security Council, is correct in this case, because a claim was submitted by the Indian Government concerning the Jammu and Kashmir question, and at the same time—even before the first meeting of the Security-Council on that question—a counter-claim was submitted by the representative of Pakistan. The representative of Pakistan considered that this counterclaim was related to the first claim, and that they should be considered simultaneously.
I believe that the President of the Security Council and the Secretariat were correct in submitting both cases on the same agenda item, leaving to the Security Council the decision as to whether these two claims were related to each other, whether they were within the same framework and could be given a single solution by one resolution which would cover both of them.
The first decision which the Security Council can take is to unify the claims into one case; however, the Security Council would be free also to decide that the claims are not related to that extent. In the latter event, the claims would be dealt with separately—although it would not necessarily be the case that the counterclaim would be taken up after the solution of the principal claim. The claims may be considered at the same time-one at one meeting, and the other at another meeting. In any case I think the Security Council should discuss first whether these two claims are related to each other, and should be dealt with as one case and decided upon in one resolution. Therefore, the proposal submitted by the representative of the United Kingdom to consider the claims separately, I think, leads to the conclusion that the representative of the United Kingdom considers that the claims are not related to each other to such an extent as to warrant unification.
The representative of the United Kingdom did not speak about the relationship between the claims. If he considered them not related to each other, his suggestion would be correct; but if he considered that they were linked to each other, then his proposal to have the claims discussed and decided separately would not be correct.
(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. no. 231, pp. 149-150)